Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

TERACLOUD APPROACHES AUTOMATED SRM WITH A BALANCING ACT
by Simon Robinson for the451.com

TeraCloud has joined the growing ranks of storage resource management (SRM) companies that include automation features in their products. New features in the company's SpaceNet 3.0 flagship product -- announced this week -- allow administrators to manage storage resources 'by exception' and to perform basic automation tasks for reclaiming disk space, protecting key files, and launching third-party backup tools such as Veritas and Legato.

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

The message

Storage resource management specialist TeraCloud has released the latest version of its SpaceNet application, offering centralized management of heterogeneous storage systems and improved policy management, including some automation capabilities.

Competitive landscape

Following a wave of consolidation last year, there are few independent SRM vendors left. Those fighting it out to reach critical mass include Tek-Tools and Astrum Software, but they must differentiate themselves from Fujitsu Softek, IBM Tivoli, CA, EMC, HDS, Veritas and Sun.

The451 assessment

Despite the growing challenges that organizations face in managing their storage environments, SRM tools have emerged as only part of the answer, and widespread adoption has yet to take place. TeraCloud's SpaceNet appears a well-designed offering that should be of particular interest to environments spanning both mainframe and open systems. But good products alone rarely make a successful company, and TeraCloud needs to score the partnerships that will allow it to penetrate beyond its installed base.

Context

Established back in 1991 as Trilogy Software, the Bellevue, Washington-based company spent the first decade of its life developing storage management products for mainframe systems, amassing about 200 enterprise customers. This represents 18% of Fortune 1000 companies, including IBM, Merrill Lynch, Boeing and Chase Manhattan Bank. In early 2000 it hired Douglass Ebstyne as CEO, and raised $5.5m in first-round funding in May 2002, led by Boulder Ventures.

TeraCloud has a couple of strong selling points. Its 'consultative' sales processes allow it to develop strong relationships with its customers: 90% renew, and 80% buy additional products. Second, SpaceNet is just about the only SRM tool designed to run across both mainframe and open systems environments.

The company has gained 20 customers since SpaceNet's launch in December 2001; not a breathtaking achievement, but not trivial either given the economic climate and the rapid consolidation that the SRM market has seen over the last year or so.

Strategy

TeraCloud spent most of 2002 conducting extensive research into its own customer base, with the conclusion that the vast majority of organizations are still struggling to effectively manage storage growth. Nothing new there, but a few substantive conclusions were that companies require greater control to move data within and between sites for data protection, load balancing and archiving; to deal with different types of storage media from multiple vendors; to link storage use with specific applications and users; and to understand future storage requirements and reclaim 'dead' space.

Although users expressed a desire for storage automation, what is less clear is exactly what customers want to automate, and to what extent. Users don't want to be pushed into automating a process they don’t yet fully understand, but with expectations varying widely, storage management vendors are faced with a delicate balancing act. Offer in-depth automation and some users will run away; don't automate enough and be accused of not offering enough value.

Products

With this in mind, TeraCloud has designed SpaceNet 3.0 to place the decision of exactly what to automate -- and to what extent -- in the hands of the user.

SpaceNet 3.0 has been extensively rewritten (the amount of code has fallen from 45,000 lines to just 5,000) to run Microsoft's .Net servers. Significant new features include a 'refined' agent that supports both SAN and NAS storage (the previous 2.0 version supports only direct-attached storage). This allows administrators to map and report the relationship between the physical environment and logical volumes. Improved file level management includes advanced search and real-time file browsing across multiple platforms that can help administrators keep track of resources and reclaim disk space. File or directory policy management tracks can automate tracking of activities or trends for specific files or file groups and directories.

For example, an administrator could search for all MP3 files of a certain size that haven't been accessed for 60 days, and then delete or move them. Administrators can also set policies to protect key files, such as Oracle configuration files, to ensure they are never modified or deleted. SpaceNet comes with about 140 predefined reports, which can export data in various formats.

A new Business Process Views feature allows administrators to customize their view of the storage environment by line of business, application or other business process. Armed with this information, organizations can implement policies that monitor storage usage down to the individual file level to map data, drives and volumes to the business process.

Another new feature is Management by Exception, which employs a new dashboard to present administrators with a centralized, visual overview of the health of the storage infrastructure -- displaying metrics, graphical reports, object trees and threshold indicators. As well as mainframe systems, SpaceNet can monitor and manage Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and NetWare environments, with support for Red Hat Linux in the pipeline.

Users can drill down into user-defined storage 'hot spots' -- or favorite objects such as systems, volumes, drives, directories or files -- to identify the root cause of problems in real time. Policies can be set to flag a potential problem before it occurs, such as an application that is approaching its disk threshold. Users can customize the dashboard to see only the elements they are interested in on the storage infrastructure, such as AIX systems in a particular geographic region.

TeraCloud believes that by introducing some basic automation for repetitive, labor-intensive tasks, it can prepare the ground for more sophisticated automation. Full automation, such as dynamic storage provisioning, is in the company's development plan.

Business model

SpaceNet 3.0 has been in beta testing for three months, and the company has four organizations trailing the software; Alegent Health, Cadence Design Systems, Excelon Corporation and ADP Corporation. Currently, the company mostly sells direct, but is building a partner channel comprising both OEMs and large value-added resellers. Discussions are taking place on both fronts.

Competition

At present, TeraCloud is experiencing most of its SpaceNet sales success within its own customer base, where its existing relationships provide an open door. However, the company also suffers from 'startup syndrome,' especially when pitching to new accounts that are also talking with well-established players such as IBM and Veritas. This demonstrates TeraCloud's desire to form partnerships with leading storage industry players.

However, TeraCloud remains optimistic that it can still make a decent run at the market without having to be acquired. Along with fellow SRM startups Astrum Software and TrelliSoft, TeraCloud was looking for additional funding during 2002. TeraCloud was the only one that succeeded, with TrelliSoft being acquired by IBM and Astrum forming a partially exclusive distribution agreement with Overland Storage.

The challenge facing TeraCloud is that most of the major storage management software players are building or acquiring SRM functionality as a feature of their overall portfolio. In addition to IBM and Veritas (which acquired SRM technology from NTP Software and from the Precise Software acquisition in late 2002), Computer Associates, EMC, Fujitsu Softek (set to release automated storage provisioning capabilities this week), HDS and Sun all offer varying degrees of SRM.

TeraCloud likes it that way since none of them are completely focused on developing a best-of-breed offering, and will always be found wanting by organizations looking for a comprehensive system.

The question is whether organizations are looking for heterogeneous and centralized functionality from an independent vendor, or are happy to take the product their strategic storage supplier recommends. While this varies greatly between organizations, it appears that the major storage vendors are still in the driver's seat.

Courtesy www.the451.com